


What Did You Ever See In Him?

by PrinxOfTheFlamingHeart



Category: The Two Princes (Podcast)
Genre: Other, The Two Bastards (Mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 18:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19707211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinxOfTheFlamingHeart/pseuds/PrinxOfTheFlamingHeart
Summary: In a rare quiet moment between construction and wedding planning, Rupert and Amir finally have a heart to heart with their mothers. It’s finally time to know, what were their father’s like?





	What Did You Ever See In Him?

It was a rare lull between wedding preparations and castle construction. Queen Lavinia And Prince Rupert took the night for themselves. They spent their time together in Lavinia’s newly finished drawing room. Rupert helped his mother choose from a few paintings she’d brought from their castle back in the West. 

Lavinia held her hand on her chin. She turned one way and then the other before frowning. Rupert’s arms started to ache before she finally gave her verdict. “No, I don’t think that landscape really works with the lighting in here. Besides, it’s old and shows the forest beginning to creep in.” Rupert set the image in question over in the rejected pile. 

The next portrait was worse. “Oh my. I-I thought I’d had that destroyed years ago.” Rupert turned it around to look at the portrait. 

It showed Queen Lavinia, quite far along in her pregnancy. Beside her stood a man in gold-trimmed armor. He looked slightly different as a man instead of a tree, but his long nose and piercing eyes were unmistakable. It was her ex-husband. 

“I’ll call the guards to burn it,” Rupert said as he went to the door to do that. 

“Rupert, if you ever wanted to ask me anything about him,” Lavinia began, her voice wavering as if she couldn’t decide whether or not to even say it. 

Rupert stopped and turned back around. He set the frame down and stepped away, folding his arms to stop them from shaking. “Killed by a bear, huh?”

Queen Lavinia looked down and took a seat at her desk. “I did many things I wasn’t proud of.”

Rupert snickered, but shook his head. He kept his voice comically light. “Oh you mean like lying to me for eighteen years until my father’s voice called me into the forest to fulfill a prophecy I knew nothing about by possibly killing a prince that I had no chance against because I wasn’t prepared in any way thanks to the constant party and event planning you did to distract a kingdom?”

“Yes, all of that,” Lavinia answered, looking down at her hands. Rupert saw the tears welling up in his mother’s eyes and the slight anger he’d felt disappeared. 

“Mom, you did what you thought you had to,” Rupert said, crossing the distance between them and kneeling by her feet. Reaching out, he took hold of her hands. “And I did learn what I needed to thanks to you.”

“You mean in spite of me,” Lavinia corrected. 

Rupert shook his head. “No, mom. Because of you I grew up knowing what having a parent who loved me felt like. You protected me from the shadow of a father who put himself before his kingdom. Before his family even. I’d rather have a father who was killed by a bear than that petty, small man I met in the hollow.”

Lavinia took a hand to wipe her eyes with a handkerchief. “I thought it was the only way to save you, to keep you from being willing to carry on what he started. Although, in fairness, you never really showed much interest nor aptitude in anything that would’ve made you better at...” Lavinia paused, waving her hand as she tried to come up with a better phrase.

Rupert smirked. “Killing my friend?”

Lavinia sighed, nodding. “Yes, that. Although he’s more than your friend.”

“He is, but...” Rupert faltered. 

“But what, dear?” Lavinia asked, squeezing his hands.

He withdrew for a moment, then let it all tumble out. “I’ve been having these nightmares. Of that fight in the hollow.”

“Oh?” Lavinia said eloquently. “And what of it? I know it was frightening.”

“In my dream, Amir gives himself up, refuses to fight. And my father is right there, shouting at me to strike him down.” Rupert paused, running his hands through his hair idly. 

“And what happens next?” Lavinia asked, leaning forward. 

Rupert stopped and looked into his mother’s eyes. “In my nightmare, I drive my sword through his heart. I...I kill him, mom.”

Lavinia joined her son on the floor and gathered him in her arms. “It was just a dream, Rupert. In real life, you gave yourself up for your kingdom and your love. And Amir, that brave beautiful boy, he set aside his sword for you; his love and his friend.”

Rupert and Lavinia held each other a moment longer before parting. “Was...he ever your friend?”

Even with the pronoun use, she knew which he Rupert meant. It seemed like years since she’d heard his name. “Frederick wasn’t a friendly man, no.”

Rupert stood and helped his mother up. Rejoining their hands, he took a breath before asking, “What did you ever see in him?”

***

In her newly finished library, Queen Atossa inspected the shelves. They sat empty, awaiting the bounty of knowledge Atossa deemed important enough to bring to the Heartland. She’d limited herself. This library would be hers alone; the greater castle library would hold a wealth of knowledge from both sides of the land. Atossa inspected one shelf in particular as her son knocked and entered. 

“My Queen, is the room to your liking?” Prince Amir asked, skirting around the boxes of books still unpacked on the floor.

“Close the door, prince of my heart, and tell me what you think,” Atossa said, waving a hand at the door. 

Amir turned around and did as he was bid. At his mother’s side he looked at the mechanism under the shelf. “When did this...”

Atossa looked sheepish. “I altered the plans slightly, only the architect, his son and I know that this case is also a door.”

Amir tried to think of the plans in his head. “Where does this lead?”

“A passageway between rooms that ends up in the kitchen,” she said. 

“Why is this necessary?” Amir asked, pushing on the pressure plate to see the book-case slide in and over to the left. 

“One can never be too safe, my son,” Atossa offered obliquely. 

Amir shrugged and closed the hidden door with unexpected ease. “Okay, I suppose at the very least it’ll give me an edge playing hide and seek with Porridge and Fitz.”

Atossa looked at him sharply. “You lead that dog and that dog with scales through my library, Amir, and I will personally see to it that Rupert finds your baby portraits.”

“You wouldn’t!” Amir said, horrified. 

Atossa smiled. “I think he’d enjoy seeing the one of you covered in green frosting wearing nothing but your...”

Amir looked pained. “Mom! I promise! Please just...”

Queen Atossa laughed and held out her arms. Amir sighed and embraced her. “You aren’t that little boy anymore. You’re getting married, you’ll be king, and you’ll be too busy running twice the kingdom I ever had to handle.”

Amir drew back and held his mother’s shoulders. “I’ll never be too busy for you, mom. And I’ll always need your advice.”

Atossa tapped his nose. “Not always, but I will be a little selfish and stick around to share whatever I can.”

Amir smiled and turned around to look at the boxes. “Do you want help putting these books up? I remember your...incredibly particular method of organization.”

Atossa nodded, gesturing at the closest box. “I must have driven our library half mad with my ‘organizing,’ but if it means I can get you to myself, then yes. Grab that first box there. I’d like to set the history books on this shelf here.”

Diligently, Amir brought the box over and began handing volumes to his mother for approval and placing. As he picked up one, he noted a green bookmark in one. 

“Oh, looks like you were reading...” Amir said as he opened to the marker. 

“No, Amir!” Atossa cried. 

But it was too late. Glaring back at him was an image of his father. Amir noted with dark humor that the man looked only somewhat more comfortable as a human than as a tree. His trimmed beard, dark lips, set-back eyes and thick black eyebrows were more intense in living color. “King Darius the Great, King of the East, Ruler of the Golden Throne, Conqueror of the Burnished Realm, Hero of the Crimson Blade, Master of the Sacred Flame, Keeper of the Eternal Secrets...are all my titles variations of his?” Amir asked, looking up sharply. 

Atossa held her hands up. “With great improvements to impress upon you the humility and discipline that Darius lacked.”

“Ah,” Amir said, eloquently. He picked the bookmark out from the pages and looked it over. It was two thin planes of glass with a set of flowers braided together, framed in woven golden wire. 

“That was among my wedding gifts,” Atossa said, her voice taking on a much more subdued tone. “I didn’t treasure it as much then.”

“So you slipped it in your husband’s page in the Book of Kings?” Amir asked. 

Atossa winced and fluttered a hand at the book. “Look at the cover.”

Amir read it aloud. “‘The Book of Conquerers.’ Wow.”

Atossa huffed. “I should have thrown out or burned that a long time ago. It is easy to see from that book how your father turned out the way he did.”

Amir noticed the blank pages after his father’s entry. “I won’t be adding my name to this book.”

Atossa nodded. “I know you won’t. I raised you better than that.”

Amir looked down at the book and shook his head. “I worry about anything I might have gotten from him. I keep having...nightmares about him goading me on, encouraging me to plant my sword in Rupert’s chest. In my nightmares...I do.”

He felt a tear hit the blank page in the book in his hands. His mother’s hands, warm and soft, held his hands and gently pushed them together, closing the book. “But you didn’t; you and Rupert found a way that none of us ever considered. A better way. Have you spoken of these nightmares to Rupert?”

“How...how could I?” Amir asked, grimacing. 

Atossa lifted his chin to gaze into his eyes. “Because you are not alone. Neither of you are. Because if I’m right you have more love between you than Lavinia and I had with our spouses, put together.”

Amir set the book down, but held his mother’s bookmark in his hand. “What did you ever see in him?”

***

Queen Lavinia let go of Rupert’s hands and paced the drawing room floor. “I suppose I was impressed by his manliness. I was a silly girl, heir to a barony so small you could practically throw a stone over it. My mother produced the most beautiful, wondrous flowers of every size, shape, and hue. I helped her with the family business and we never wanted for very much but neither were we particularly wealthy. My father passed the winter before, his ship sank by Eastern pirates as he sailed looking for seeds.”

“It sounds pretty lonely,” Rupert said. 

Lavinia didn’t look at his expression. “It was. We couldn’t afford to attend every party in the capitol but one day a herald arrived and said that every eligible girl would be required to attend a ball in honor of His Highness Prince Frederick’s twentieth birthday.”

“I told you seventeen was too young,” Rupert commented. 

Lavinia shrugged. “Sorry again, by the way. Well, I had just barely turned eighteen and had hardly more of a dowry than your average cow-maid.”

Rupert thought for a moment. He couldn’t imagine his mother in anything less than the best. “How did you stand out in such a crowd?”

Lavinia smiled. “My mother taught me every dance she knew and our land was close enough to the capitol that we always heard the latest dance crazes. That night, I don’t think I left the dance floor. I wore quite a few young men out, I don’t mind telling you. They couldn’t keep up with me and so a sort of line started to form.”

“They lined up to dance with you?” Rupert asked in wonder. 

Lavinia smiled, but her eyes gave away her discomfort. “There might’ve been a bet involved? I never did know for sure, but that was the rumor. But last in line was the prince himself, although I didn’t know it.”

“You didn’t know?” Rupert asked. 

Lavinia gestured widely. “I’d never been to the Royal Court before, remember?”

“What was he like?” Rupert asked. 

Lavinia waved a hand. “Oh, he wasn’t the best dancer that night, not even amongst the young men. But he didn’t step on my feet either. And he could hold his end of a conversation, which isn’t easy with me, even when I’m dancing.”

As the recipient of many harangues from his mother where he never got a word in, Rupert believed it. “What happened then?”

Lavinia thought, and sighed. “At the end of our dance, he bowed and I curtsied. Then he shocked me by going up to the throne. And he announced his intention to wed...me.”

“He didn’t ask you?” Rupert nearly exclaimed. 

Lavinia turned to face their portrait. “I don’t think he’d ever consider that I would say no. As it so happened at the time, I wouldn’t have said no. My mother was in tears of joy; his advisors were in tears as well. But he always got his way and they bowed to his will. There had been talk of him wedding an eastern bride but with the piracy and everything else going on at the time, those talks had long since fallen through.”

“When did you figure out what he was really like?” Rupert asked. 

Picking up the portrait, Lavinia turned it around so as not to look at it. “Not for the longest time. I made excuses for his behavior. The temper tantrums, the bullheadedness and the warmongering. Violence was his answer to most things. I was young and I made a few mistakes of my own amongst his court. When I found out I was pregnant I insisted on returning to my mother’s keep.”

“How did he commission that, then?” Rupert asked. 

“He had the artist come to our keep, them painted him afterwards. Right before that battle, I think.”

She sighed again and gently took his hand. “And so it happened that you were born in the same home I was and on the very day your father got himself cursed. When word reached us, I took you and your wet-nurse and returned to take control of the castle. Lord Chamberlain had held it against a small band of usurpers. After your father’s champion, Sir Percy was the most senior knight to return from that battle. His account of the battle and the prophecy was written down before I could stop it. You stole that book once.”

Rupert’s eyes shot up. “The Forbidden Book? Whatever happened to it?”

Lavinia let go of his hand and looked down. “I’m sorry, Rupert. You must understand how devoted I was to keeping the truth from...”

“You burned it.” It wasn’t a question, but Lavinia nodded anyway. Rupert felt his chest tighten as his mother’s face fell and her tears welled up in her eyes. “Please don’t cry, mom. I’m not mad at you. Not anymore.”

Lavinia cried anyway, rebuffing his attempts to console her. “How? How could you ever possibly forgive me for being such a horrible mother?”

“You weren’t horrible!” Rupert argued. “You were a very good mother who did what she thought she had to. And, for all the frustration and loneliness it caused, it did work. I’m not my father.”

Lavinia nodded, her eyes still streaming tears. “I made Sir Percy my champion when it was clear your father’s old champion was too taken with drink to continue. And no one else thought of taking the throne from us. It helped that I established a reputation quite unlike your father. And for a time we were quite beloved by all.”

“And now we are again. We both worked hard in that forest to redeem ourselves. After all the lies, love won,” Rupert said, finally embracing Lavinia once more as tears streamed down both their faces. 

***

Queen Atossa took her old bookmark and turned it over in her hands. “Your father could be quite a charmer. His voice was as smooth as his wit. And I was a young girl, too absorbed in my books and flights of fancy to realize he was very likely playing me for a fool.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” Amir said. 

Atossa waved a hand at herself. “That doesn’t sound like me now, no. I learned better. When I found out he had some strange bet going with a friend I told him off. I think it was the first time a woman ever spoke to him in harshness. His parents passed away the year before during a bad plague. He was alone and angry, but he came to me one day and apologized.”

Amir raised an eyebrow. “He actually said he was sorry?”

Atossa hesitated and looked away. “Not in those words, but close enough that I forgave him. And he announced his intention to offer my brother any price for my hand in marriage.”

Amir scrunched his nose at the thought. “He bought you from your brother?”

Atossa waved her hand in the air. “It was an outdated tradition I later did away with. Along with many other outdated traditions since then. My brother agreed and i was wed to him that same month.”

Amir almost gave up the conversation, but then realized the opportunity might never arise again. He almost hated himself as he asked, “How long did he take to show his true colors?”

“His rage consumed him.” Atossa’s eyes went wide with the memories. “The plague was blamed on a traveler from the west. Along with everything else that was going on at the time, he used it as context to go to war. I was vocal in my opposition, but he disregarded me as he believed it was just...my pregnancy affecting my mind.”

“Did he ever convince you?” Amir asked. 

Atossa shrugged. “Amongst the diplomatic efforts, we four rulers met precisely once. Queen Lavinia and King Frederick did not impress me with their graciousness, to say the least. It was a disaster on both sides.”

Atossa shrugged. “I think Darius played on my pity for his situation. My own parents had long since past and left me in the care of my younger brother, a knight who passed away in the later war.”

“You never told me you had a brother!” Amir said, thunderstruck. 

Atossa heaved a weary sigh. “It wasn’t relevant. And it still hurts to this day. I named you for him, a name that your father wasn’t pleased with when I insisted on it. He wanted to name you Xerxes.”

Amir wasn’t quite over the revelation, but he decided to take time to process it. “Yikes. Thanks for my name.”

“You’re welcome.” Atossa turned around and picked up another book to shelve. “Well he wasn’t around to insist on Xerxes, not when he never returned from the hollow. His most ardent supporter, the lady Arachne, went to the forest and never returned. So I forbid access to it and began planning The Phoenix so that none of my subject would ever set foot in it again.”

“Why does that name sound familiar?” Amir wondered aloud. 

Atossa paused to look back from the shelf. “It doesn’t matter now. What matters is that in all my preparations for you to become a better man than your father, I didn’t let you have a childhood!”

There was something in his mother’s tone that he wasn’t used to. He stared at her for a moment as he realized a single tear slid down her cheek. “I never did play with other children. My only company were the servants that I ordered around.”

Atossa wiped her cheek. “I was so paranoid about the other children carrying some old mindset that I set you to tasks you couldn’t possibly be ready for. I made you carry so much so soon from your schedule to your physical training. I even shared the prophecy with you knowing full well you might have to kill another prince in order to save your kingdom.” She turned away again and he could tell his mother was finally crying in earnest. 

Amir reached out his hand, but was afraid to turn his mother around. Afraid to see his rock and foundation crying. “You did what you thought you had to.”

She whirled around then, her eyes lost in the depth of her own self-hatred. “I trained my son to be a perfect prince. I thought you would unite the land with diplomacy, but then expected you to be ready to kill. And I knew from the moment I started that it would hurt you to strike down someone else. I kept you alone and never showed you how to make friends. I was a terrible mother.”

Amir reaches out once more, this time taking her shoulder and pulling her closer. “You were right, but you were also wrong. I’m not a killer. Nor was I a diplomat. Ask Rupert how well I acted when I thought he was a thief. I failed you more than you did me.”

Atossa shook her head. “No, my sweet boy. You brave, beautiful boy. You could have killed Rupert with a blindfold and a hand behind your back. But when he offered his life to you, you didn’t take it. And when he offered his love to you, you gave yours in return. You were a better prince than I could have ever hoped. In spite of everything I kept from you.”

“I could have used friendship,” Amir admitted. “It was a very lonely place as the prince who could fulfill the prophecy. But in spite of all that sacrifice and loneliness, it worked. I’m nothing like my father.” He kissed the top of Atossa’s head. She placed her cheek on his chest and held him tight until she could hear his heart beating. 

At length, she stepped back and looked up. “No, you and Rupert will be good kings. And your strengths complement each other’s weaknesses. Where Rupert gained social skills and the goodwill of his people yet cannot handle a sword to literally save his own life, you gained knowledge and training, yet can be a bit self-absorbed and insular. Two princes, very different yet very alike. Two Kings, who complete each other.”


End file.
